Smaller super funds eye AustralianSuper, ART dominance

As AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust (ART), and Aware Super continue to dominate the superannuation sector in terms of total assets, the smaller players are becoming serious contenders.

New APRA statistics show that AustralianSuper had more than 3.4 million members at the end of March with $335.3 billion in savings. ART members of 2.4 million had $286.3 billion in assets while Aware Super's 1.2 million account holders had $175.4 billion.

Unisuper's membership base of 679,000 saved up to $127.8 billion while 1.8 million Hostplus members had $111.2 billion.

It was a different story based on an average balance per member. The Nissan Superannuation Plan with 30 members, which will be wound up on July 31, had $1 million, putting it in first place.

In second place, the Perpetual Super Wrap with 3330 members had $848,434 on average, while the Commonwealth Superannuation Scheme's (CSS) 97,100 members had $649,181.

On a median basis, the Nissan Superannuation Plan and CSS came out on top with $892,461 and $568,184 respectively. The Public Sector Superannuation Scheme came in third spot with $487,058.

Super funds with a relatively smaller membership base reported substantial assets under management.

A report by KPMG found that size of the fund by membership does not always correlate to strong net cash flows, noting that HUB24 with less than 100,000 members, for example, reported $5.4 billion of inflows in FY23.

In APRA's latest figures, the HUB24 Super Fund, with only 136,260 members, had $32.1 billion in assets.

The Netwealth Superannuation Master Fund had 96,670 members and $28.8 billion.

New entrant to the super sector, Vanguard Super, had 12,850 members and $1.1 billion at the end of the period. The 3180 members of Mason Stevens Super saved about $1.09 billion.